Tooth Grinding May Be Inhibiting for Your Daily Life

Many adults and roughly one third of children grind their teeth at night. For children, the reason may coincide with the eruption of teeth. For both children and adults, tooth grinding has been linked to stress, anxiety and traumatic life events. You may only grind one or twice week. You may grind every night. Regardless, you might want to consider that your tooth grinding is also linked to being withdrawn.

At the 22nd Annual Meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies (APSS), researchers presented abstract demonstrating study results of nearly 2000 pre-school children whose parents were queried about their daily activities and tooth grinding. Slightly over 35% of the children were grinding and query results from these children indicated that they were more likely to experience difficulty in school and to be withdrawn.

The moral of the story is that all oral health conditions should be evaluated. Tooth grinding can lead to wear and tear on the teeth, unevenness, and the appearance of small thin teeth in severe cases. Tooth grinding may also destroy your tooth restorations and compromise your bite, also known as malocclusion. It’s a condition that can creep up on you in more ways than one. So, it is best to have your dentist evaluate your tooth grinding.

Your dentist can correct your malocclusion, refine your tooth restorations and supply you with a mouth guard to protect your teeth. In fact, the mouth guards today have significantly improved so you don’t feel like you’ve got a ball in your mouth when you sleep.